


Ovation

by harcourt



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Aftercare, Angst, Bathing/Washing, Caretaking, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kent/Bob undertones, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 21:14:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14839286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: After going first in the NHL draft, Kent Parson comes home to an empty house.After spending two nights in the hospital, waiting to make sure Jack is going to be alright, Bob Zimmermann comes home to Kent still in his draft-day suit.





	Ovation

Kent went first, but there wasn't any celebration other than his mom congratulating him over him over the phone when he called, from the Zimmermann's place, where he was waiting to hear if Jack was okay. Bob had come home to get clothes for himself and Alicia and to take care of whatever ends had been left dangling when they'd rushed out of the place two nights ago to meet Kent at the hospital.

Jack was awake. Kent knew that much because Bob had texted him as soon it had looked like Jack would _stay_ awake, but anything beyond that was a mystery. Kent had killed the time between then and now watching a blur of reality TV and imaging all sorts of medical scenarios. Liver damage, brain damage, he didn't know enough to be realistic, but that meant there wasn't a limit to the catastrophizing either. 

"Hey, kid," Bob said, when Kent sidled into the kitchen. He was half-hidden behind the open fridge door, orange juice cartoon still half lifted to his mouth. He glanced at it, following Kent's gaze, then smiled a little and said, "Don't tell Alicia, okay?" in a trying-hard-to-be-light tone. Kent made himself smile back.

"Yeah."

Bob drank and fished around in the fridge, grazing his way through boxes of leftovers, and Kent stood in the doorway in his socks and watched him, feeling blank and empty and unsure whether it was okay to still be there, in their house where Jack wasn't, but without anywhere else to go either unless he went back to New York, and that would take a bit of time to arrange. "How's--um," he started, and stumbled before rallying and rushing through, "How's Jack doing?"

Bob looked up, Tupperware in hand, then seemed to really see Kent for the first time and shoved the box back into the fridge without its lid, and straightened up. He looked tired. His eyes had dark circles under them, and his face looked gray in a way that reminded Kent of zombie movies. The fridge swung closed, Bob absently pushing the door to make sure it sealed, while Kent looked away and then to the floor.

"Oh, god," Bob said. "The fucking draft."

"Sorry." 

"Kenny--"

"I'm sorry. Jack should have--"

Bob didn't seem to hear him. "You're still in your suit."

He wasn't, really. Just in his shirt and pants, stupid Aces jersey over it all. His tie. Kent tugged at it to loosen it a little more and shrugged. "Yeah. I--uh. I went to Vegas." It's nothing they hadn't expected. Not even news. His voice sounded unsure anyway. Watery and distant.

"Kenny, that was two days ago."

"I was--if someone called, I wanted to be by the phone."

He wasn't sure when Bob had walked over, but suddenly he was close enough to put his hands on Kent's shoulders, holding him like that for a second before pulling him close, into a hug. "Jesus, Kent," he said. "You smell like stale booze. What did we tell you boys about--"

"There was an afterparty." It was a blur. Kent had drunk whatever had been put into his hand and grinned for photos, but hardly any of it had stuck in his memory. He'd been introduced around, and some of the senior Aces had been there but Kent couldn't come up with a name or an order of events to save his life. He wasn't even sure how he'd gotten home--to the Zimmermann's--afterwards, except he must have because he was there and Bob was there. 

"I'm sorry," Kent said again, as Bob hustled him out of the kitchen and into the hallway, towards the guest bathroom. "I should have kept a better eye on Jack."

Bob murmured something that sounded like a negation, but he still looked sad and tired and worn, even as his hands gathered up the hem of Kent's new jersey and eased it up his body and over his head before hanging it carefully over the back of a chair--one of the weirdly placed ones that no one ever sat in. His hand smoothed over it, fingertips brushing the logo before he turned back to Kent and smiled. "First pick, Kenny," he said, gentle.

"I'm--"

"It's okay. Here. Let me get your tie." He slid the knot apart easily, then pulled the silk free of Kent's shirt collar with a long _shhhp_ noise and rolled the whole thing up in his hands before setting it in the chair and moving on to the buttons of Kent's shirt.

"Someone might call," Kent said, as his shirt came untucked and was pushed back off his shoulders.

"Then we'll call back."

"Jack--"

The shirt followed the tie, tossed more carelessly, and then Bob's hands were at his belt and then the fly of his slacks. "Is okay. He's gonna be okay." His pants fell, and Kent stepped out of them without thinking. "You got help in time." Bob leaned forward and kissed his hair, almost shockingly tender, his thumbs hooked in the waistband of Kent's underwear.

"Jack should have gone first."

"It doesn't matter goes first. Went first." Kent's underpants slipped easily down his thighs, and Bob bent down to guide his feet out of the fabric, one at a time like Kent was a small kid with dubious coordination. "If Jack doesn't go to the league at all, it's okay."

"I'm sorry," Kent repeated. Again and not really making sense, but he wasn't sure what else to say. He swallowed as Bob pulled his socks off, one at a time, then straightened back up and took him by the shoulder, to turn him around and urge him into the bathroom, where he left Kent standing on the bathmat while he got the water started. Kent watched as he flicked his fingers through it every few seconds, testing the temperature.

"Okay. Get in."

Kent got, ducking his head to let the water sluice over his hair and just stood there for a while, enjoying the warmth, suddenly aware of how cold he'd been until then. It was weird that he hadn't noticed. Water ran into his face, and Kent blinked it out of his eyes over and over before realizing he'd started crying, shoulders hitching and hands braced against the tile.

"Hey, it's okay," Bob said. He was rolling up his sleeves. "It's going to be fine."

"I was supposed to go with Jack. To the draft."

"I know."

"I was gonna be an Aero."

Bob didn't answer, busy making sure the sleeve of his shirt was secure. He was dressed for the draft too, Kent realized. He must have been up extra early, as excited and nervous as Kent had been. Anxious all day and dressed too soon, expecting to end the night and early morning at the same party Kent had been at and not waiting in some hospital hallway drinking bad coffee and eating vending machine food.

"It's okay," Bob murmured. A fruity, flowery smell filled the bathroom. Kent recognized it as the fancy shampoo Alicia kept in the downstairs bathroom for guests, bought as much for the bottles as for the contents. Decorative colored glass, scent vaguely coordinated to the theme of the wallpaper. Bob scrubbed it into his hair like it was nothing, nudging Kent's chin up to get his head out of the spray so it wouldn't wash away instantly, but pouring out a sloppy handful, and following that with as carelessly generous an amount of conditioner. His fingers were rough as he washed it back out of Kent's hair, the first thing in two days that felt at all real. "It's okay to want to go first. Everyone in that room wanted to go first. _I_ wanted to go first, when I went."

Kent sniffed, inhaled water, then snorted as it burned his sinuses. "Jack--"

Bob's hand smoothed over the back of his head, like soothing a child. "Jack doesn't own the draft, Kenny," he said, before reaching past to pick up soap from the little bowl set in the corner of the tub. Some kind of porcelain thing, and decorated with little flowers, with a hands-off cake of soap molded into a stack of petals sitting in the middle of it. Not matchy, because Alicia thought that looked try hard, but just casually fancy. Bob worked it briskly into a lather, considered his sudsy hands, then handed it to Kent while he went to get a washcloth. Under the hot water, the delicate edges of the petals softened and melted, rounding out into undefined lumps, the details washing away until only the overall shape gave it away as a flower.

"You shouldn't have to do this," Kent said, when Bob came back, all the way from upstairs, judging by the washcloth he'd retrieved. Kent hadn't thought he paid enough attention to things that weren't hockey--at least as they pertained to Kent--to know things like which towels were his, but the worn fire engines of the set his mother had sent with him from New York were clearly as obvious to Bob as to Kent. Otherwise, he'd have grabbed something from the cupboard at the end of the hall, where the pretty, impersonal guest towels were kept, but not the sets with duckies Jack had insisted on keeping since he was six. Kent hadn't thought about how his things were mixed in with Jack's, like he was family. Hadn't realized Bob noticed or knew. His throat felt tight. "You don't have to make me feel better."

Bob took the soap back and after a few seconds, Kent felt the touch of rough terrycloth on the back of his neck, then along his shoulders and down his spine. "But you have to give up wanting to be first?" he asked, voice mild. "And give up being happy about it? And give up being proud of it? Because Jack wanted it too? To make Jack feel better?"

Kent shrugged. Raised a hand to rub at his eyes, but water ran right back into them. "No," he said, because it sounded like what Bob wanted to hear. He sounded whiny. "But I didn't want it as much as Jack. I wouldn't have--I would have been happy anyway. I wanted Jack to be there."

It was disjointed. Upset cry-talking that should have been embarrassing and that a guy like Bad Bob should have no patience for, but instead of telling him to suck it up, Bob made shushing noises and ran the washcloth all over Kent's body, down his back and ass and back up his chest, and says, "I know. I know. Me too, Kenny." His voice sounds as tight as Kent's, but his eyes are dry when he hangs the washcloth and urges Kent out from under the water. "But he's going to be okay. That's what matters, right?"

He had Kent's towel, too. The fabric wasn't fluffy anymore, a little scratchy against his skin, but familiar when Bob wrapped him up in it and rubbed Kent's hair dry with the downstairs hand towel, tossing it aside after to hang sloppily off the sink. "Yeah," Kent agreed.

"Hockey's just hockey, Kenny. It's not the whole world."

Kent looked at him. Bob's face looked empty, somehow, like something that had always been there was missing, but Kent couldn't figure out what. It was about how Kent felt too, though. Blank and scooped out. Like a shell, going through the motions. "I didn't know," Kent said, because Bob seemed tired of hearing him say _sorry_. Bob steered him out into the hall, and up the stairs, with a hand on his back. "I mean, I knew he was--you know. Having problems. I kept telling him it was gonna be alright. I kept saying--"

The steps were a blur. It was a challenge to stumble up them without tripping, and Kent was suddenly painfully aware of how little he's slept in the last couple days, and in the days before that, when he'd been a knot of nerves about the draft and thought Jack's worrying had been the same kind of thing, usual and normal and not a crisis.

"It's not your fault," Bob keeps saying, voice low, pushing Kent towards his room, immediately down the hall from Jack's. Kent keeps his eyes resolutely forward, not glancing at Jack's door as they go past it, and notices that Bob falls silent too, just for those few steps, neither of them sure how to handle the fact of Jack's absence, or the mutual awareness of it and of where he is and why. Kent's tempted to start babbling again, and bites down hard on the inside of his cheek to stop himself. Jack had always been frustrated by his talking, especially when things sucked and Kent couldn't stop trying to plaster over everything with rambling and chatter.

Bob pulled his bedding apart--an unmade tangle from the last time Kent had been there, a lifetime ago when everything had been different--then shoved Kent in under the blankets, still naked, pulling the towel free as he did, to save the sheets from getting damp. He hung it over the back of Kent's desk chair, then moved to rifle through the dresser, pulling out a t-shirt and sweats. "My sister's coming," he said, as he set them on the foot of Kent's bed. "She'll look after you."

"She doesn't have to."

"Kent--"

"I'm going to Vegas."

Bob smiled. "I know," he says. "I'm proud of you." He came over to smooth a big hand over Kent's hair, just once and real quick, like a guy petting a dog he wasn't quite sure of. "Just eat her cooking, okay?" he said, forcing a little humor into his voice. "It's not like you're going _right now_."

Kent nodded. Rubbed at an eye with the knuckle of one thumb. Even after the shower, he felt gritty with lack of sleep. 

"Yeah," Bob agreed with a sigh, and tucked the blanket in a little more under Kent's chin. Thinking of a younger Jack, probably. "I have to wash up and head back. Alicia needs clothes and Jack wants some things."

"His phone and stuff is in my bag." Kent had remembered that, at least, even in the middle of an emergency. He's not as sure where his own shit is, but he'd remembered to save Jack's.

"Thanks, Kent."

"Can I call him? Later?"

Bob patted his arm through the blankets. "I'll ask and send you a message when he's ready, okay?"

"Okay."

"I'm sorry we didn't update you. I didn't think you'd be--I didn't think." He was hovering, still halfway between Kent's bed and the light switch.

"You had to worry about Jack."

Bob laughed, but it didn't sound like anything was funny. "I thought that," he said. "Turns out I had more to worry about than I realized."

Kent ducked further into the blankets, burying his face in the comforter.

"Go to sleep, kid. Call us when you wake up. There's food in the fridge, so promise you'll eat something." The light switch clicked, and the room went dim, partial light bleeding in from outside, through the curtain covered windows. Bob hung in the doorway for what was maybe another minute, even though it felt like a long time. "I'm proud of you, Kent," he repeated, finally. "And not only because you're a good hockey player."

Kent tried to say something coherent back, about Jack and hockey, or something like that, but before he could sort it out into anything coherent, Bob was gone, closing the door behind him, careful and quiet like he thought Kent might already be asleep.


End file.
